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How can you make social media work for your charity?

A powerful tool, social media is one of the most cost-effective communication channels available.

It is one of the easiest ways for you to genuinely and instantly engage and interact with donors, volunteers, media and other charity stakeholders.

Creating your social media strategy

Informal and grounded in dialogue, social media may feel a bit daunting as it allows you to interact directly with your audience, however, this is it’s greatest strength and something to be embraced and encouraged.

Before you start, it’s vital to understand your audience and what you are trying to achieve. Deciding how best to communicate with multiple audience groups is much like deciding the message for your website, or any other marketing communication. Consider your audience motivations and interests, and then you can align your content with these.

Your communications should always be clear and professional and within the guidelines of your charity Brand.

Having a good content plan, with plenty of planned posts and content to publish will help you think more strategically about your social media, rather than just posting random and perhaps ill thought through messages.

Using social media for fundraising

Your website may be the main place you get your donations from, but research shows charities using social media are 51% more likely to see an increase in donations.Your social media channels can make it even easier for people to donate.

However, it’s important to remember that social media is a busy and a high traffic channel, so make sure you are capturing attention in the right way. For example, a link to donate at the end of a YouTube video is much more persuasive than a simple Tweet asking for donations.

Promoting your events and campaigns

Social media is a fantastic channel to promote your charity and it’s campaigns or events. There are a large number of ways that you can promote using social media, including:

Post about it – the simplest way to promote an event or a campaign is simply to post about it and you can embed a link to a specific page on your website (if you want to track social media traffic and conversions in your Google analytics then you can create UTM codes – Google gives lots of advice on how to do this).

Set up an event page on Facebook. (If you are not sure about your designing skills get help from a professional WordPress design agency.)

Upload photos from past events to showcase previous experiences.

If you only have time to use one channel, link your Facebook and Twitter feeds so posts reach more people.

Encourage followers to repost and share event information.

It’s really important to remember to feedback on how much you raised or to thank everyone that was involved in an event or a fundraising initiative, or, even better, show people what the money raised has done to help the cause you were raising funds for.

Social Media is also a great way to reach influencers so follow the top blogs and accounts in your charity’s area of interest. This way, you can stay up to date while remaining relevant and getting attention through retweets and shares.

This kind of activity also helps you to cultivate the kind of impression you want to make with your social media presence.

Build a community with your followers and engage with them, while using your social media channels as an opportunity to bring like-minded people together, giving them a voice too.

If you would like further advice on social media in the charity sector please get in touch.